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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113422">hoax</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red White &amp; Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tags Are Hard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:07:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>stood by the cliffside, screaming "give me a reason"; your faithless love's the only hoax i believe in.</p><p>alex and henry once said they felt forever about each other. but its been years since then, and alex is staring at a stack of divorce papers a mile high. can they salvage their relationship?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, June Claremont-Diaz/Nora Holleran, Zahra Bankston/Shaan Srivastava</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hoax</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maybe Alex should have seen it coming. He and Henry had been fighting for almost six months- every conversation started with a tight-lipped, thinly veiled insult and crescendoed into a screaming match. It escalated to the point where Alex would regularly stay at the NYU library until he was confident that Henry had already gone to bed, and Henry would leave the house before Alex had woken and spend weeks at a time in England. But Alex never thought it would end. Not like this, not ever.<br/>
Especially not with Henry staring at him stonily as he looks over the divorce papers he had gotten one hour prior. “Aren’t you a lawyer?” He asked, after Alex re-read the same sentence for the fifth time, “Don’t you take classes on this shit?”<br/>
“Oh yeah, that’s the first thing we learn. ‘How to delineate divorce papers between a prince and the first son of the United States.’”<br/>
“I just thought- with the hours and hours you’d spend on the exam revisions and the papers and whatnot- you’d be a bit better at this.”<br/>
“I do that because I can’t afford to be mediocre-”<br/>
“Oh yes, I have absolutely no experience in that-”<br/>
“Fuck you, you know what I mean-”<br/>
“Alright, shut up. Shut up! Sign the damn papers.”<br/>
Alex signed them. Later that night, after he had packed his things and moved into a hotel in downtown Manhattan, he tried to figure out where things went wrong. They’d dated for a year and a half, before getting married. Then, there had been a blissful ten month period when Henry would read his poetry to Alex and Alex would make them pancakes every morning. How had things gone so wrong?<br/>
Maybe they were just too young. They were, technically, each other's first loves after all. And wasn’t there a saying about how first loves never last?<br/>
But no, Alex remembers. There was a time when he felt forever about Henry, and Henry felt forever about him. What was that quote that he kept going back to? When I sleep, your body comes back to me in my dreams. And now they avoided each other like a kid avoids sleep to escape nightmares. </p><p>The next morning, Alex wakes after a fitful sleep. He dreamt that he and Henry were back in their brownstone, washing dishes, and talking in low voices about nothing in particular.<br/>
“I’m going to leave you, Alex,” says dream Henry, suddenly. Dream Alex doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he just laughs. “I’m serious,” presses Dream Henry, “You’re so… messy. You spend hours in the library, you’re nervous, frantic, anxious, on edge, all the time. How long do you think I’ll be able to tolerate that?”<br/>
Alex tries to make his shitty hotel coffee, but his hands won’t stop shaking. It’s like he finally realized what’s happening: Henry is leaving. His Henry is leaving him. His Henry, who can recite Victorian-era poems as easily as Nicki Minaj lyrics, who used to cut fruits and give them to Alex while he was studying, who memorized all of Alex’s orders at every takeout place within five blocks of their brownstone. Oh god, what had he done? How had he driven them apart?<br/>
Because it had to be his fault, right? Through blurry eyes, he typed out a text message to Nora and June. He would probably have to skip class for the day, considering the massive chasm that was growing in his heart. If Henry were here- no. Henry wasn’t here, and he never would be. The best thing that had ever happened to Alex, and it had ended so suddenly. </p><p>He almost tells the person knocking at the door to fuck off, before he remembers that he texted June and Nora. By the looks on their faces when they see his tear streaked face, they don’t know what happened. So not only does he have to relive the events of the past six months, he has to watch their faces grow sadder and sadder with sympathy. By the end of the story, he gives up on holding back the tears.<br/>
“He doesn’t love me anymore,” He chokes out, before June pulls him into a hug. He feels so, so small, like Henry’s love was something that made him bigger and better. Now, the absence leaves him helpless and untethered, standing by the abyss that Henry left. “I want him back, but I don’t know how.”<br/>
“Alex,” says June, “Did you and Henry ever really fight before this?”<br/>
“We had, like, little arguments. Nothing like this. Maybe we weren’t as good together as we thought we were.”<br/>
“Nope. Definitely not. I’ve seen how y’all look at each other. There’s still something there, I know it,” Nora declares.<br/>
“Well it doesn’t matter what you know, Nora, because it doesn’t matter.” Alex said, his voice increasing in volume with every word, “He left. He left me! And now we’re just going to go about our lives pretending like the last few years were just a blip in our existences, because that’s what he wants.”<br/>
June and Nora exchange worried glances over Alex’s head as his stare goes blank. </p><p>Alex has another dream about Henry that night. This time, they’re back at the palace where Alex first declared his love. Only this time, instead of crying, Henry calmly and quietly explains to Alex why he could never love him back; each word seems so precise, so carefully chosen to cut right to Alexs’ core, that he wonders if maybe Henry somehow astral projected into his dreams to further explain why their relationship wouldn’t work out. He wakes suddenly, not screaming or crying, but quietly, slowly. In a moment of weakness, he allows himself to imagine a happy memory, just so he can go back to sleep. He imagines the night after they returned from their honeymoon. It was almost midnight, and there was leftover wedding cake in the fridge, so they pulled an all-nighter scrapbooking, of all things. Alex thinks he may have had more fun then than during the actual vacation. Just him, Henry, and Taylor Swift playing softly in the background.<br/>
In the morning, he reprimands himself for being so weak. He makes a game plan: he’s changed his life plan before, and he’ll do it again now. He can apply to a better law school now, maybe Harvard or Princeton. He can spend more time volunteering for campaign teams. He used to block out the emptiness before, and that’s exactly what he’ll do now. Until it won’t exist anymore. Until he can feel whole again. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>HENRY</p><p>Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.<br/>
After that first fight, Henry didn’t know what to do. His father died before he ever saw the worst parts of his parents’ relationships- all he saw was the happy parts, the perfect picture-frame-on-the-mantle, snow globe scenes his parents showed him. When he went to college, he imagined some beautiful boy dashing into his life on a white horse, sweeping him into his arms, smoothing out all the creases on his heart. When he found out that Alex loved him back, he felt something deep inside him begin to uncrumple. When they got married, he wanted Alex to read him like a poem, memorize every line that time had scratched into him.<br/>
Then came the fighting.<br/>
First, it was smaller things. Henry spent too much time at the shelter. Alex worked through their anniversary. Then, the attacks became bigger; Henry spent too much time away because he took Alex for granted. Alex didn’t care enough about their relationship to remember the important dates. Slowly, Henry began to feel Alex retreat back into himself, put up walls that hadn’t existed since before their screaming match that rainy night at the palace. So he did the same. Pretty soon, the air between them grew icy and cold, just like it was the months after their first meeting in Rio. They walked on eggshells around each other, unwilling to start another fight. Because that’s what happened everytime they interacted.<br/>
They were miserable. Henry could sense that, and, unlike him, Alex had actual work to do. He was trying to get into congress, for god’s sake. He didn’t deserve to have Henry’s dead weight attached to him, slowing him down all the time. Better to cut him off and bleed out on his own.<br/>
And that’s what’s happening now, right? Because Alex’s been gone for two days and Henry already feels like someone’s cut his heart out and left him, immobile, unable to save himself. He always said that loving Alex would set him on fire, and now he’s going up in flames. He can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he can’t live in this brownstone without being reminded of what he lost. Three days later, he flies back to England.</p><p>“Mate, I’m not going to mince words here. This is stupid.” Pez’s voice cuts like a dagger, straight to the bone.<br/>
“M’in a meeting,” Henry mumbles, after muting his zoom call.<br/>
“Doesn’t matter,” Says Pez, “You’re stupid for breaking things off with Alex like this. Couples fight all the time. You have to fight for relationships to make things last”<br/>
“Pez, you weren’t there. You didn’t see him dart out of the room everytime I walked in. Those last few months were absolutely horrible. Not just for our relationships, but for our health.”<br/>
“Oh, and this is really healthy. You starving yourself and staying up all night, him, no doubt doing the same. Great job, Henry. Seriously, though, when have your self preservation instincts ever been right?”<br/>
Stubbornly, Henry shakes his head. “Leave, Pez, please,” he adds softly.<br/>
Pez shakes his head and exits, not before telling him that he’s making the “biggest mistake of his fucking life.”</p><p> </p><p>His next visitor is less obliging. “I don’t give a fuck who you’re talking to, Henry,” hisses his mother, “You will listen to me right now, because I am the queen. Of fucking. England. And I cannot run a nation and deal with my 18th century depressed poet of a son at the same time.”<br/>
It’s such a complete 180 from the years after his dad’s death that Henry’s actually rendered speechless for a while. When he gets his voice back, he tries to mumble something about the fighting, when his mother interrupts him again.<br/>
“Henry. Couples fight. All the freaking time. That initial spark of romance? It disappears, because that’s an emotion and emotions are fleeting. After that, you’ll find that the same quirks and habits that once tugged at your heartstrings are just annoying inconveniences in an already busy life. That’s the point. Love isn’t supposed to be easy.”<br/>
“So what’s the point,” says Henry, disinterested. His mother looks him in the eye.<br/>
“The point, dumbass, is that you work through all the shit because you care about each other. And I know that you and Alex care about each other a lot. In fact, I think this whole divorce thing is just a misguided attempt on both of your parts to try and do what’s best for the other person. But whatever,” Her voice gets quiet. “Henry, you were willing to fight the entire world to keep this boy. Now you can’t even fight through your stupid fight-or-flight response.” </p><p>That night, as Henry avoids sleep, he is haunted by the conversation he had with his mother. Was she right? Was this just something he could fight through?<br/>
The more he thought about, the more sense it made. He had to fight for his relationship with Alex. Even if it wouldn’t work out in the end, he had to try. He turns on his side and texts the only other person he knows in a long term, committed relationship.<br/>
“Henry? What the fuck?”<br/>
“Hey Shaan. D’you have a minute?”</p>
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